Background: At the University of Colorado, we developed the ‘Health Innovations Scholars Program’ (HISP), a 5-week intensive training program for pre-clinical medical students who seek to lead innovative transformation of the healthcare system. The program focuses on quality improvement, patient safety, leadership skills, design-thinking, and change management delivered through didactic sessions and applied to an experiential quality improvement project. The curricular content is delivered by core faculty, who also coach the project work. Prior publication suggested an improved aptitude in the domains of quality improvement, patient safety, healthcare leadership and operations immediately following the program.1 We sought to understand the impact of this program on our participants’ career trajectory. The program has been in place for six years, with a total of 46 student participants.
Methods: We sent an anonymous electronic survey to each participant to assess medicine specialty choice, participation in quality improvement projects, patient safety work, and healthcare innovation initiatives, as well as leadership position held, since their completion of HISP. Each response was optional.
Results: The survey response rate to date is 55% (24/46), with ongoing data collection at time of this submission. Since their participation in HISP, of those who responded, 88% (21/24) have participated in ongoing quality improvement work, 67% (16/24) have held a leadership position, 33% (8/24) have had involvement in healthcare innovation efforts, and 17% have participated in patient safety projects. Participation in HISP changed the career trajectory in 58% (14/17) of the survey respondents, and 100% (17/17) of those who responded would recommend the program to a colleague. Of the respondents, 42% (10/24) are in, or plan to pursue, internal medicine residency, and 17% are in or planning to pursue pediatric residency. Other desired residency specialties include Family Medicine (1), Emergency Medicine (1), Anesthesia (2), OB (1), PMR (1), Psychiatry (1), or unknown.
Conclusions: The Health Innovations Scholars Program offers a unique skillset to medical students and has the potential to change their future career trajectory, towards a focus on quality improvement and healthcare redesign. Most of the participants pursued ongoing work in quality improvement and the majority hold a formal leadership position. This program is an innovative way to develop future leaders of healthcare transformation efforts.
Reference:
Sweigart JR, Tad-y, D, Pierce, R, Wagner, E, & Glasheen, J. The Health Innovations Scholars Program: A Model for Accelerating Preclinical Medical Students’ Mastery of Skills for Leading Improvement of Clinical Systems. American Journal of Medical Quality, 2016;31(4), 293–300.